


The Distance Between Sorrows

by ArachneJericho



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Gen, Inuit Mythology - Freeform, Original Work - Seal Tales, PTSD, Romantic Relationship, Trans Character, Vietnamese Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:49:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArachneJericho/pseuds/ArachneJericho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PTSD has otherworldly consequences in the Immortal Lands.</p><p>Written because I need serious catharsis from my own PTSD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distance Between Sorrows

That night, Psann turned over in his bed to look at Lan, sleeping on the other side of the dorm room on one of the small wooden beds assigned for the purposes of letting freshmen get a good night's rest, which was rather ambitious of them. Nevertheless, Lan was fast asleep, her long, black hair spread across the pillow and sheets. She looked beautiful, as ky-lan do, even in their human forms, like a song frozen in time. And snoring a little, it had to be said. 

He turned once more onto his back, trying to find comfort against the thin mattress on the pallet. Then, out of exhaustion, in the wee hours of the morning, Psann slept, believing he had forgotten what day it was. 

But the mind remembers. It always remembers, even when you fool yourself into thinking that if you just forgot that the dates were coming, that you would be spared. There is always something that reminds the monster in your brain. Even in the Immortal Lands, where time is at best a loose agreement amongst the high beings currently in the area at the time, there is always something that betrays you. The scents in the air; the sound of the babbling brook where you spent your lunchtime, all innocent and so deeply in love that you never noticed the subtle plucking of the strings of that memory you swore you buried at sea. The way the light falls across the shadows. 

With a soft sound like the closing of waves over your head as you drown, the thin blankets over Psann collapsed in on themselves as the body they had been covering disappeared. 

#

The waters. He swam through them in seal form, and they were a jewel blue, warmer than he was used to in his long years in the Arctic. 

The Laughing People. A pod of them had found the English trawler, and were leaping around it, their grey snouts fixed in a permanent smile they may or may not be feeling. Stories from his mother that had come to life.

He banks. He knows he shouldn't come near the boat; that its appealing teal, red, and black designs beneath were lies. There is a name that he almost remembers. A warning. 

Panic. The boat draws nearer, or perhaps he draws nearer to the boat, though his mind is screaming. His fins and body refuse to obey him; he is drifting in the seas, despite his fear. 

Nets. 

# 

Hours later, Ma Tien Lan woke up. She knew something was wrong the instant she saw that Psann was not in bed. She doubled-checked the clock on the shelf. No, Psann would never be up before the Dragon's Hour. His habits had caused some pain when they had registered for classes, late after the night in the galaxy-lit gardens, some months ago. 

Lan rose, grabbing her fuzzy morning robe from the wall hook, and pulling it around herself. The room was cold, and she walked to Psann's bed. She sniffed the blankets. They smelled of him, yes, but there was another scent, the kind she had been learning to smell in her Unnatural Trails in the Immortal Lands class. A dream-scent, of salt water and fish. 

There is only one kind of dream in the Immortal Lands that can result in a sleeper disappearing. 

And Lan without Dream Walking Studies under her belt due to the late hour at which they'd registered for courses, and had to settle for second best. Or third best. Quartenary best, if she was being honest. 

Still, she had walked the lands between the shadows of leaves before. She grabbed her tote bag hanging on her chair and ran through items she had to bring. Apples. He wouldn't like them, but she didn't have raw fish on hand. A bottle of water that she hastily filled from the tap in their bathroom. 

She slung the bag around her neck even as she transformed into the scaled quadruped with deer's head and complicated antlers, a lion's tail and split hooves, that is the ky-lan. Bunching her muscles, she leapt into the wall above Psann's bed and disappeared. 

# 

The knife. It slices too easily through his flesh, from chin to tail, while he is still alive. His blood sprays across the deck, and Lord Chamber-Hill grits his teeth and rips open seal skin and blubber with a sickening sound. 

_Not real, not real, not real, not real, it's so real, it's real, it's real, real, real, real_

Psann tries to wake up. But there is no other reality to wake up to. This is his reality. 

He screams again, and it only seems to feed Lord Chamber-Hill's pale, ghastly smile. 

# 

Lan gallops through the space between realities. Worlds are like soap bubbles, glowing in the Void, drifting in all directions expanding forever into the darkness, but the key is to remember that distance is association, not nearness. Traveling a distance in time and space is something that the merest infant knows, inexorably carrying themselves to their eventual death. Someone who knows how to travel other distances can navigate worlds. 

But distances must compose themselves of two dimensions. Choosing the dimension of association is one thing. What is the other? The wrong choice will send her careening off who-knows-where.

The world she is looking for must be small, contained; something that has budded off their own world of this iteration of the Immortal Lands, a bubble which glows blue in her memories (another thing about traveling through the Void; your memory must be picture-perfect). 

What is the second dimension? 

_Population._ No matter how grandiose a waking nightmare is, no matter how solid its walls in the Void, it can't help but hold a population of one. 

Turning her head, she follows the distance between association and population, wondering only vaguely what happens when two occupy a waking nightmare, and not caring. 

# 

The voice of Lord Chamber-Hill is like nothing that Psann remembers. It is a proclamation across reality, echoing in Psann's head until it aches. 

He has a name now, though he will not utter it, even as the sinuous voice of his former husband weaves itself across his throat. 

He is dressed in a flowing gown of blue flowers against white. He feels as fragile as he must look. He walks down the hall, and turns to look at himself. 

There is nothing but a monstrous shape in the mirror, like smoke and clay combined into one horrible, nauseating form. 

Before he can think about what that means he is whisked into the secret hall of trophies that Lord Chamber-Hill has collected over the years. The hand of Chamber-Hill forces him to kneel before the fire, head bowed. His long hair is tightly bound, and tightens further as Chamber-Hill grips it. 

Hooves clattering. 

That is new. 

The sense that something is old about this scene, that it is a memory come to life, begins to break its hold on his mind, though he is mostly puzzled. 

Chamber-Hill's demand to know what _that_ is, is cut off unceremoniously with the sound of hooves hitting meat. Psann's head is yanked back and he falls over. 

"Are you alright?" asks a familiar voice. Psann angles his head painfully, for his husband still has his hair in a death grasp. 

"Funny question," he manages, and looks up at the person dressed in teal and black Victorian finery, black hair neatly moussed. The coat has scales. The gloves are pearlescent silver. And his guest might have a lion's tail. 

"Drink this," commands the new presence, pushing a Nalgene bottle to his lips. 

"Ah. 'Drink me,'" says Psann, who drinks. 

"Eat this." 

Psann stares at the gold and red apple offered. There is something about it, apart from its vegetarian nature that his mind is still accustoming itself as something his body will actually draw nutrition from. It glows, for one thing, like rubies and gold. It is from another place, another time. 

He remembers watching someone eat them, her fingers covered with their juice, crunching the crisp white flesh between perfect teeth. 

Everything collapses. 

# 

Psann found himself sitting astride Lan's scaly back in his pajamas. He looked down at himself, and decided that, whatever else happened when they got back, blue and white was _definitely_ not _him_. 

"It's a shame that world collapsed," said Lan beneath him mournfully, her voice like bells. "I would have enjoyed kicking the balls out of anyone who imprisoned you there." 

"Some of them were. Were okay people." 

"Really?" asked Lan. 

"I could seriously use some ice cream," said Psann, changing the subject before another world might birth itself from memory. "Lots, and lots, and lots of ice cream. Unending buckets of it. Perhaps a world made from it...."

"I know a place," said Lan. 

The distance between sorrow and ice cream is a very short one.

**Author's Note:**

> Psann is an Inuit transman and reluctant human. He still thinks of himself as a seal, even though that was untimely ripped from him. 
> 
> Ma Tien Lan is a Vietnamese transwoman and non-reluctant ky-lan. A ky-lan can be thought of as a quilin, known as the Eastern Unicorn in the West.
> 
> Lord Chamber-Hill is an asshole and an Englishman. 
> 
> The Laughing People are Bottlenose Dolphins. 
> 
> The Immortal Lands are where Psann and Lan are going to a University for the gods, immortal creatures, and assorted sundry. Both are on scholarships from the Lady of Owls, Erishkagal. 
> 
> I totally did not intend for their names to rhyme, but oh well.


End file.
